Issue #67 of the SportsShooter Newsletter has been posted. It includes an article by Trent Nelson of the Salt Lake Tribune discussing digital archiving issues and a piece by Sports Illustrated staffer Bill Frakes detailing the contents of his 25 equipment cases. (More than 30 cameras, roughly 40 lenses, and...

Photo Mechanic for Mac OS X and Windows has been updated to v4.1.2.
The new release adds the ability to view and caption Photoshop-format (.PSD) files, fixes a problem with viewing Nikon NEF files that have been saved out of Nikon View or Nikon Capture, adds a variable to extract a camera-unique...

Pocket Lint reviews the very cool-looking Acer Ferrari 3200 laptop. It comes standard with an AMD 64 2800+ processor, 512MB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, a DVD burner, and USB 2.0 and FireWire ports. Admittedly, it may not be better than dozens of other Windows laptops for digital photography, but it's...

Between now and December 31, 2004, Auto FX is offering DreamSuite Series One, DreamSuite Gel Series, Corel KnockOut 2, Corel KPT Collection (versions 5,6 and 7) and Corel Bryce 5 for US$199 when purchased together in the Creative Xtreme Bundle for Mac and Windows....

Nikon today has announced the Nikkor AF-S VR 200mm f/2G IF-ED, a fast aperture telephoto lens that includes Nikon's Vibration Reduction technology, as well as a 1.7x teleconverter, the TC-17E II.
The lens is slated to ship in the fall of 2004, says a Nikon USA press release.
...

Digital Photography Review has posted a short article on the Sony HDPS-M1, a standalone battery-powered photo storage device with a 40GB hard drive and slots for Memory Stick and CompactFlash media cards. It will go on sale in Japan in June, but DPReview says there is no information on availability elsewhere...

dcRAW-X v1.5.4, a Mac OS X-only batch RAW file converter, has been released. The program can perform linear RAW conversions on files from 109 different digital camera models. A demo version of dcRAW-X is available for free download, and a full license costs US$15....

Phase One has released v3.5 of its C1 suite of browsing and RAW file processing applications.
Version 3.5 of C1 PRO, SE and DB (for Phase One digital backs) is available for both Mac OS X and Windows; C1 LE v3.5 is available for Windows only.
Two of Phase One's authorized online...

PictureCode has released Beta 8 of Noise Ninja v2.0 for Windows and Mac OS X.
A wealth of new features for the handling and automatic assignment of noise profiles headline the list of changes in this new beta version.
Another page provides links to v2.0-compatible noise profiles for a range of digital...

Kodak recently released DCS Photo Desk 4.0.1, a bug-fix update for its browsing and RAW file processing software.
Details of the changes in the new version are in a thread in the forums on this site....

Reuters [via Yahoo News] reports that prices for NAND flash memory, the basic component in flash storage media such as CompactFlash cards, will continue their recent sharp declines. Some flash chips are already more than 50% cheaper than they were in October of last year, and the article quotes a...

Digi-Frame has announced the DF-1710 17-inch "digital picture frame", essentially a 17-inch LCD that can be mounted inside a standard 16 x 20-inch frame. It can display individual images, photo slide shows, and various video formats, and it has built-in speakers for playing MP3 soundtracks. The device has a hard...

We're gradually building out the Secure Digital (SD) section of the CompactFlash Performance Database: joining the Sandisk and Delkin SD cards already tested in the Canon EOS-1D Mark II and Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n is a 512MB SD card from ATP with a 60X speed rating.

DO Labs' online store is now open and selling downloadable versions of the various components that make up DxO Optics Pro.
The Windows and Mac OS X software is designed to correct optical abnormalities in digital SLR photos, and and is tuned for specific camera and lens combinations.
A web page shows...

SportsShooter reports on the "Friends of VJ" sports memorabilia auction, which ends May 27th. Proceeds from the telephone/internet auction will benefit the two sons of Sports Illustrated and Anaheim Mighty Ducks/Angels team photographer VJ Lovero, who died of cancer earlier this year. Items up for auction include original signed prints...

CNET has this "first take" on HP's upcoming f2304 23-inch desktop LCD, which CNET says will be the fourth LCD of that size to hit the market. HP plans to sell the f2304 for US$2099 in the U.S., according to the article....

Crumpler has recently introduced a series of camera/laptop backpacks, as well as three hard shell laptop sleeves. As is the Crumpler norm, perilously cheeky product names and ad copy abound.
Five new backpacks are now available: "Brian's Hot Tub", "Puppet", "Shrinkle", "Farmer's Double", and "The Formal Lounge". There are two basic designs, with...

Digital Photo Professional and EOS Viewer Utility, two new browsing and RAW file processing applications from Canon, are now available as free downloads.
Posts by Chuck Westfall of Canon USA in the forums on this site provide more information and links to the software....

Bruce Fraser's most recent "Out of Gamut" column for creativepro.com details a straightforward method for calibrating Photoshop's Camera Raw plug-in to the particular color rendition characteristics of an individual camera. Camera Raw is not compatible with custom camera profiles, but it provides extensive tools for tweaking its built-in color profiles under a tab...

Kodak recently posted v4.0 of Photo Desk and v.5.01 of the firmware for the DCS Pro SLR/n, the DCS Pro SLR/c, and the DCS Pro 14n/14nx. The most important new feature in Photo Desk looks to be a Lens Optimization Slider Control, which allows users to select the degree of compensation applied to RAW images to correct for hue shifts caused by certain lenses on the DCS Pro SLR/n, SLR/c, and 14nx.

The May issue of The Digital Journalist is now online. The issue includes several appreciations of photojournalist David Douglas Duncan, inspired by the recent publication of his book, Photo Nomad, a retrospective of his 60-year career. There's also a videotape interview with Duncan and an online gallery of images from...

Lexar Media and Kodak today announced a multi-year agreement that will see Lexar manufacture and distribute Secure Digital (SD), CompactFlash and other memory formats under the Kodak brand name beginning in the fourth quarter of 2004.
A press release has additional details....

Digital Domain has released v2004.200 of Qimage, the company's digital image viewing and printing application. The new release includes support for IPTC captions and numerous interface and workflow improvements. A free 30-day trial version is available for download, and a full license costs US$44.95....

Pentax has announced the SMC Pentax-DA 14mm F2.8 ED [IF] lens, the company's second DA-series reduced-image-circle lens for the *ist D digital SLR. The lens weighs 14.8 ounces, measures only 2.7 inches long, and has a 35mm-film format focal length equivalence of 21mm on an *ist D. Pentax of America says the lens...

The web site photoworkshop.com has posted a series of 26 tutorials on Canon's Digital Photo Professional software for the EOS-1D, EOS-1Ds and EOS-1D Mark II.
The QuickTime movies provide a good overview of the basics of the RAW file viewing and processing software (with a healthy dollop of Canon marketing-speak in...

Vancouver, Canada-based photographer Craig Minielly is offering three sets of Actions for Photoshop that automate various effects (which look great in the example photos) and tasks in a portrait photographer's workflow.
Prices range from US$49 to US$79 per set, or US$165 for all three sets. More information is on Minielly's Aura...

Sigma has announced the 24-60mm f/2.8 EX DG lens. Sigma uses the "DG" designation for lenses that the company says are designed specifically for digital SLR cameras. The new lens will begin shipping in Sigma, Canon, and Nikon mounts in June, but no pricing information is available yet....

Extensis today has announced they're now shipping the Windows version of Portfolio 7 and Portfolio Server 7.
The new release, whose most notable feature is its ability to utilize the add-on NetPublish module which streamlines the publishing of Portfolio catalogs as web sites, is available today via electronic download.
The Mac version is...

Delkin this week has announced the US$70 USB Bridge, a device that takes the place of a host computer and, as the name implies, acts as a bridge between two USB devices. The AA-battery powered device can communicate with, and transfer data to and from, a range of digital SLR cameras, card readers, CD-writers and portable digital music players (including Apple's iPod). We've been working with a prototype unit of the USB Bridge this week, and while we're not sure yet of the utility of the device, we can absolutely attest to its coolness.

iView Multimedia, maker of the MediaPro photo cataloging software that's been available on the Mac platform for several years, has today announced the release of the long-awaited Windows version, in addition to an updated Mac version. Its ease of use, ability to catalog and preview a variety of both standard and RAW formats (complete with IPTC, EXIF and other metadata) and minimal-configuration interface have made MediaPro a longtime staple in our digital workflow.

DO Labs announced today that DxO Optics Pro, its upcoming product for correcting distortion, blur, vignetting and lateral chromatic aberration in photos taken with certain digital SLR cameras, will ship May 24, 2004.

ExtremeTech reports on the introduction of Intel's next-generation Pentium M microprocessor, code-named "Dothan", and a slew of new laptops that use the chip, including models from Dell, Gateway, HP, and IBM. The new chip is available in 2.0GHz, 1.8GHz, and 1.7GHz Pentium M versions, as well as a 1.4GHz Celeron...

AnandTech has published a review of the Sony DRU-700A Dual Layer DVD recorder. The DRU-700A performed without a hitch for AnandTech, but the article notes that you can burn two standard 4.3GB 12X DVD+R discs in less than 15 minutes while it took 45 minutes to burn one 8GB DVD+R...

Forbes.com reports on a soon-to-debut application called Pixserve, developed by a company called Pixlogic, that can find images by analyzing their visual content. Users point to an image and ask Pixserve to find similar images in the database.
At this point, Pixlogic hopes to license Pixerve to imaging software companies...

Olympus America has announced U.S. and Canadian price reductions on the E-1 camera, as well as rebates on E-system lenses that are effective from May 1 through July 31. In the U.S., the estimated street price for the E-1 body drops from US$1799.00 to US$1499.00 and the rebates range from...

Noise Ninja v2.0 for Mac OS X has reached beta 7, and has been joined by the first beta release (also called beta 7) for Windows. Changes in beta 7, as noted on the PictureCode web site, are:
Added a "Suppress halos" feature to the sharpen function to minimize bright artifacts during...